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Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon Has an Amazing Tribute to Satoru Iwata

By Christian Hoffer - November 23, 2017

The newest Pokemon games contain a lovely tribute to Satoru Iwata's contributions to the Pokemon franchise.

Satoru Iwata was the president and CEO of Nintendo from 2002 to 2015 and helped guide the company to a resurgence thanks to the release of the Nintendo DS and Wii consoles. Prior to his promotion, Iwata was also a game programmer and had a hand in developing many of Nintendo's popular franchises, including Pokemon.

Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon acknowledges Iwata's contributions to the franchise, although finding it will take a little bit of work. Players will first need to find Game Freak's office in the Alola region, which is located in HeaHea City, and have a Pokemon from the Virtual Console version of Pokemon Silver on their team.

Once players enter the Game Freak offices, they'll need to find Morimoto, the in-game version of Pokemon designer Shigeru Morimoto. Once he sees that you're carrying a Pokemon from Pokemon Silver, he'll mention Iwata's major contribution to creating those games.

"When we were having trouble fitting all the data in for Gold and Silver," Morimoto says. "And we were really in a pinch, this amazing guy came along and made a program for us that solved all our problems. He went on to become the amazing president of a real big company soon after that, too."

Sure enough, Iwata came up with a way of compressing Pokemon Gold and Silver's data to the point that he also had space to include the entire Kanto region in the game as well.

Morimoto has trivia about all of the early Pokemon games, but players can only unlock them by having Pokemon from the different Virtual Console games on their team. That means players will need to have downloaded and played Pokemon Red, Pokemon Blue, Pokemon Blue, Pokemon Gold and Pokemon Crystal for the full experience.

It's nice to see that, two years after Iwata's passing, that Game Freak and the Pokemon Company are taking steps to immortalize him in their games. Thanks to Joe Merrick from Serebii.net for finding this pretty amazing Pokemon easter egg.